Spot the mistake
French clothing plurals: fix chaussures noires and gants gris
Correct one wrong word in eight French plural clothing labels. Practise chaussures noires and gants gris, including the unchanged masculine plural gris.
- A1
- 8 sentences
- Tap the wrong word
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In short
Write des chaussures noires but des gants gris. Noires is feminine plural. Gris already ends in s, so its masculine plural has the same spelling as its masculine singular. The feminine forms are grise and grises. Each line below has one wrong word to repair.
Yellow the idea to rememberBlue French to learn
First find the garment noun and its grammatical number. Then decide whether the noun itself or its adjective conflicts with that information. Not every correct plural needs a newly added s. In particular, gris stays gris with a masculine plural noun, while marron remains unchanged in these ordinary colour labels.
Tap the word that's wrong in each sentence.
Black shoes
Chaussures is feminine plural, so noir becomes noires.
Grey gloves
Des requires the plural noun gants. Gris is already the correct masculine plural colour form.
Two long coats
Manteaux is masculine plural, so long needs the plural ending s.
Blue jackets
Vestes is feminine plural, so the adjective is bleues.
White scarves
Écharpes is feminine plural, so blanc becomes blanches.
Green jumpers
Pulls is masculine plural, so vert takes s: verts.
Grey shirts
Chemises is feminine plural. Gris becomes grises, unlike the masculine plural gris.
Brown scarves
The noun must be plural after des. Marron stays unchanged as the colour adjective here.
Follow all four forms of gris
| Number | Masculine | Feminine |
|---|---|---|
| Singular | Un gant gris | Une chemise grise |
| Plural | Des gants gris | Des chemises grises |
In des gant gris, the wrong word is gant because the noun must be plural after des. Gris is correct for the masculine plural. In des chemises gris, the noun chemises is already correct, but gris needs to become grises because chemise is feminine. The same visible colour word therefore has a different role in the two errors.
Keep gender and number together
Une chaussure noire ; des chaussures noires.
One black shoe; black shoes.
Une écharpe blanche ; des écharpes blanches.
One white scarf; white scarves.
Noir takes e for feminine and s for plural in noires. Blanc has the feminine form blanche, then the feminine plural blanches. A repair may change several letters inside one word. The activity targets one incorrect word per line, rather than promising that every correction consists of adding a single letter.
An unchanged colour still needs a correctly counted noun
Des écharpes marron has a plural noun and an unchanged colour adjective. In the exercise, des écharpe marron is repaired by changing écharpe to écharpes. There is no reason to change the already correct marron. Learn that invariable colour as a whole pattern rather than assuming every word after a plural noun must end in s.
For your own description, settle the garment noun first. Ask whether it is masculine or feminine and whether you are describing one or several. Then choose the colour form, preserving an already correct ending such as gris rather than adding another s.